LA Ermor Questions

[Shovah32]

I tend not to play them in large games due to the micro but in small-medium games i like to set taxes to 200% and have a combination of pillaging and patrolling undead. Not only does it protect you from an early invasion(i take a magic pretender rather than an SC and freespawn production takes a while to get rolling) due to the speed at which the population dies(supply problems ftw!) but it gives you gold quickly so if you need it, you have it.

[PvK]

incognito said:
I'm surprised to hear that. I would have thought that, even with population dying, 100 taxes and no unrest is the money optimizing solution here. While there are no purchaseable national units, having castles, temples, and high PD in every province really helps.

What's the logic to 200 taxes, and presumably a quick choking off of future revenue?

I agree that having castles, temples, and high PD is all good for Ashen Ermor (especially castles and temples, as long as some gold reserve is kept). However I don't see that that determines the tax plan.

I tend to keep tax at usual levels (even sometimes below 100 to reduce unrest if my dominion is still at least a couple of provinces away), but only until my dominion arrives. However, once my dominion arrives, I see that it very quickly kills off the population and available gold income all by itself. Faster than unrest, even without patrollers, at least in the last version I played Ashen Ermor in (I think there was a tweak to the Ermorian dominion death rate in one of the patches). My rationale for going to 200% when my dominion arrives was therefore to multiply the income while it lasted, since it wasn't going to last long. The curve is falling sharply, so better to multiply the income on the wide end and reduce it at the narrow end. I didn't take statistics, but that seemed to make sense.

Patrolling would of course be another approach, but partrollers could also be used to conquer more independents during the expansion phase before one's own dominion spreads, so I actually tended not to do much patrolling in the games I played as Ashen Ermor. However in some multi-player games (especially with score graphs ON), one might want to prefer patrolling and slower expansion in order to appear to be weaker and less threatenning to other players.

(I'm not claiming what I did was the best thing, but it seemed to make sense and work well.)

PvK

[TirAsleen]

In numbers wailing ladies are very good, their melee attack works similar like petrification.

A bit expensive though

In general its best to expand quickly where your dominion is to get undead freespawns fast, and go quickly for burden of time, well of misery and soul gate. Undead comanders: censors, bane lord, wraith consul and wraith lord.

Always have some bishops with you to reanimate the corpses after a battle to have soulless warriors.

Taxation set to 100%, until its in your dominion then you can set it too 200% and either patrol there or pillage it.

Building temples with cheap priests and castles with weak mound kings where your dominion is high for a bit better troops.(knights of the unholy sepulchre)

[1000yd_stare]

Why dont we approach this from the other side. What are good counters to wailing winds, darkness, rigor mortis?

Assume you are LA Ryleh Dreamlands coming out of the seas into Ermor dominion.

[PvK]

Well there's always Mind Hunt...

[PvK]

Oh ok... a couple of ideas:

Elementals can be a good response to darkness and decay, since they're more or less immune to both.

LA Ermor has some reason to worry about R'lyeh since so much of their armies are usually mindless, leaving not very many minds to fry to win a battle.

[1000yd_stare]

Sorry, i did get a chuckle from it.

In my attacks against ermor, i have noted that the disentegration of the undead, once the leaders are gone due to the soul slays, is sort of like a dust to dust effect every turn till they are gone. Its certainly not an immediate, all encompassing thing.

[PvK]

Well you can't have your enormous towering cake of undead flesh, and eat it too...

I think that leaderless mindless undead also stop moving, though yes they'll also still fight opponents that are right next to them.

As Dreamlands, you should have your own wall of chaff to put in your first wave to meet them, though.